To understand this state of affairs, it is helpful to take a wider view of the cultural matrix in which it has come about. The fundamentally human—and quintessentially romantic—fascination with space and time, following wave upon wave of exploration, conquest, and colonization since the beginnings of civilization, rose to a great peak during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe and America. Broad interest in the history and art of Western antiquity was stimulated by such momentous events as the unearthing of the lost city of Pompeii (1748 f.) and the revolutionary rise of democracy, whose Classical idealism alternately resonated and clashed with resurgent nationalism and militant imperialism. As the traditional cultures of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Oceania became increasingly familiar as a consequence of significant improvements in transportation and communication and ever-expanding trade relations, they were eagerly assimilated by Western artists.

Although in retrospect we can only deplore the often violent, irrational, and irresponsible actions that helped to shape the romantic aesthetic, it would be both petty and absurd not to acknowledge the magnitude of its creative legacy. At least two aspects of that legacy, which often occur together, continue to inform Western art through the present day: eclecticism and historicism.

If eclecticism fostered the interpenetration of geographically and ethnically diverse cultural elements, historicism opened the door to seemingly limitless creative possibilities by effectively erasing the illusory boundaries between past, present, and future. Together they conferred upon artists the unprecedented freedom to explore a universe of artistic forms and styles unfettered by chronological constraints.

The visionary landscapes and timescapes of Around the World in Eighty Days (Jules Verne, 1873) and The Time Machine (H.G. Wells, 1895) epitomize the spirit of romanticism and continue to fire the imagination of millions of readers. Indeed, the science-fiction, fantasy, and adventure genres they helped to establish have grown into multibillion-dollar industries. Star Wars, Star Trek, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, and The Lord of the Rings—all of these blockbuster films are as firmly rooted in the romantic tradition as Disney World, rock music, and the food courts at local shopping malls, where one can sample a variety of international cuisines while shopping for merchandise wrought in a dazzling variety of contemporary, traditional, and ethnic styles.

As in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, historicism and eclecticism in the early twenty-first century lie very close to the heart of Western culture:

Jules Verne? H. G. Wells? No, Karlheinz Stockhausen.¹